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Originally posted by PeteBoyes
I've been to a number of Judo competitions/tournaments this year, it seems like I've been away every weekend since Xmas, and it occurs to me that many of the medal winners exhibit a degree of single-mindedness that is akin to selfishness. Surely, this selfishness is against one of the founding principles of Judo.
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I'm not sure it's appropriate to make the jump from single-mindedness as akin to selfishness directly to selfishness itself.

When I go to shiai, I do so to test myself. To do this, I need a fully committed opponent, intent solely on beating me. Otherwise, how is this a test? To be fair, I am also intent on beating my opponent.

While it may appear selfish, this is the purpose of shiai; to test yourself by allowing others to test themselves against you.

I've also made some friends at shiai; their single-mindedness went only so far as the edge of the mat.

The determination to do well and achieve one's best is a fine ideal, but this is often at the expense of others. I don't mean the fellow competitors that you beat in the early rounds, I mean those fellow clubmates who you have used as fodder in your training prior to the tournament.
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But I'm also fodder for their training. Training partners are not passive dummies; they are attempting to apply their techniques against me at the same time I'm attempting to apply my techniques.

If I don't at time attempt to beat my training partners to the best of my abilities how are they to improve?

Uchikomi is used by tournament players as a training tool. Uchikomi should involve both participants gaining benefit from the exercise, but the version that competitors perform is for the sole use of Tori to gain the benefit of fitness and muscle memory.
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Huh? Don't both partners get a chance to do uchi-komi? Uchi-komi is also used by non-tournament players as a training tool; is this somehow different?

So my question is, how can these 'sport' Judoka be saved from their errant ways and brought back to the true 'way' ?
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Who are you to decide these judoka are errant in their ways? Judo is in many ways an extension of the physical culture movement that brought about amateur (freestyle, folkstyle and Greco-Roman) wrestling and the modern Olympic movement.

That the IJF has continued on the same path does not mean it is errant, just a different application of the same philosophy Kano started with. There's room in judo for many different expressions.